America's Talking - Questionable COVID-Relief Spending Allegations Pile Up

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

Lawmakers are outraged after reports that federal COVID-relief tax dollars may have gone to wealthy hospitals while avoiding helping out poor hospitals in recovering from the pandemic. Republican members of Congress have raised this very question, asking why $17 billion of COVID-19 relief funds was used by hospitals with profits topping more than $53 billion, “while $35 billion went to hospitals that reported a loss of almost $130 billion.” Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. Tuesday, just a few days from now, April 18th, is Tax Day. The deadline for most Americans to file their income tax returns with the federal government. Have you filed your taxes yet, Casey? I have not. I'm getting around to it, like probably a lot of people. Same here. We've started, but we'll have to finish up this weekend. weekend, with tax day just a few days away, it's appropriate for us to scrutinize how the federal government spends our tax dollars. And Casey, you did that this week, particularly going back to the trillions of dollars that Congress appropriated during the COVID-19 pandemic. And man, it seems like every week we're learning about more fraud and questionable spending. Tell us about this

latest round of scrutiny. Yeah, you're right. I mean, there's no way for us in this podcast to go through all the different examples of fraud. Because there was $4.6 million about allocated appropriated by Congress, you know, during COVID and afterwards, which. Trillion. I just want to clarify. Trillion. Right. Yeah.

What did I say? A million? Trillion dollars. About $4.1 trillion has been spent. Actually, Republicans are trying to get back that extra half a trillion. I don't think they're going to succeed in that because they don't have the votes. But they're trying to get back some of that money that was appropriated. But these COVID relief funds, as you said, more and more time goes on.

we see more and more examples of, wait a minute. And it's not that surprising. I mean, anytime the federal government spends a lot of money really quickly, once you start digging through the rubble, you start realizing, wait, how to, you know, what's going on here? Because if you're a lobbyist, that's the perfect time to sneak in and get a sentence in a bill that, you know, pat somebody on the back or something like that. And then there's just straight up government incompetence.

This money was not handled properly. It was not paid properly. A good example of that would be something we've written about some at the centerscore.com. And it was these COVID relief payments. right? So we know, you know, whether it was unemployment or the stimulus, that billions of dollars of those payments were just sent to the wrong people, and much of that was sent to fraudsters, right? So people who fraudulently set up accounts to receive it. So we can go through for different examples, but you're absolutely right that there's no end to the waste, fraud, and abuse in this

case. And one of the criticisms of the relief plan, not necessarily related to fraud, but related to decision-making by the federal government, sending billions and billions of dollars to wealthy hospitals, hospitals that have recorded huge profits, and far fewer dollars going to those rural hospitals that are sort of on the brink. Tell us about that. Yeah, I mean, the pandemic, of course, was a time when a feast or famine for a lot of businesses. So a lot of small businesses really suffered, went out of business, weren't able to pay their rent. But we also know that some of the wealthiest America has actually made a lot of money during the pandemic. And big businesses did really well because they had the resources to weather the storm. And we saw a sort of similar pattern with wealthy hospitals

actually made, you know, real profits and did really well during the pandemic, whereas poor hospitals really lost a lot of money. So you would think that the money that was passed by Congress to help hospitals would help the poor hospitals stay afloat. But that's not, it doesn't look like that's what happened. And lawmakers are pretty upset about this. House oversight are, you know, and others are watching an investigation to see, wait, how did health and human services distribute this money? How do they make those decisions? How could it be? How could it be that this happened? And there's also a political question, which is some of these wealthier hospitals could be in cities, which are more Democrat run, whereas poor rural hospitals could be in more red areas that could have been neglected.

And that's a little bit of speculation there, but that's the kind of question I think that Republicans have in their mind as they do these investigation or this particular hospital investigation. You know, I mentioned the federal unemployment benefits, and, you know, there's so many examples there. The Paycheck Protection Program, I'll throw out another example of fraud that I was pointed to by one of the experts I talked to at the Heritage Foundation. The Paycheck Protection Program, PPP, you know, people probably remember that, familiar with that, experienced a large amount of fraud. And one example was a Georgia man who used his PPP loan to buy a $57,000 Pokemon trading card. There also have been complaints, too, or criticism, for example, how schools spend. their COVID relief dollars. As schools shut down during the pandemic, we've since found out the massive amount of learning

loss that students suffered. Yet schools, many schools, use the money not to, not on tutors to catch kids up, but unlike the diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Yeah, you're right. And there's good examples of that. I mean, what's happening here is so much of the money isn't going where it's supposed to go. And then the money that is going where it's supposed to go is being wasted. Right. So, or misuse. So, or just being spent, even if it's not necessarily a bad cause, it's just not really what you would think COVID relief would be about. You know, COVID relief should be about, you know, getting small businesses back on the feet, helping people, you know, we just saw so many restaurants get shut down, you know, so many hospitals overwhelmed. You would think that's what it went to or helping, you know, schools recover and buy the equipment they need to, you know, to keep things safe and everything. But the school example you pointed to, I mean, California used these funds for, quote unquote,

environmental literacy, ethnic studies, and LGBTQ plus cultural competency, right? So that's an example. New York, another, you know, pretty left state used part of their $9 billion to give staff, quote, culturally responsive, sustaining instruction. And that's really like code word for some of the CRT, diversity, equity, inclusion training. Culturally responsive is one of the new buzzwords that I'm picking up as I read through grants and legislation. Cultural competency is kind of code for a of this equity stuff. And even it was explicitly stated here that they hired equity warriors, which were people, you know, basically to push equity efforts in the school at taxpayer expense, Illinois, where you are, Dan, they got $5.1 billion from one of these funds. And they, you know,

used it to emphasize equity and diversity and make equity driven investments. So, you know, we can go down the list. But at least 10 other states had plans that use their funds to put racially based curriculum or critical race theory curriculum into school. So a lot of this, you know, And it's interesting because if you were a Republican or Democrat and you opposed COVID relief funding, someone would say, wow, you hate people, basically. You don't, you know, you don't believe in COVID or you don't want to help people who are suffering from COVID. But as time goes on, we see that so much of that money wasn't really about COVID at all. Keep up with our scrutiny of federal government spending at the center square.com for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McKalep.

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